TONY JONES, PRESENTER: We're joined now from Tel Aviv by Yossi Melman, one of Israel's leading journalists and commentators on security and intelligence affairs.

He writes for the Jerusalem Report and the Hebrew news website Walla, and is the co-author of Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel's Secret Wars.

Thanks for being there, Yossi Melman.

The Australian Government still wants answers to some big questions. The biggest of them all is what on Earth Ben Zygier was charged with. Do you think they will ever find out?

YOSSI MELMAN, JOURNALIST AND SECURITY COMMENTATOR: I think that the Australian Government already knows what were the charges against him. I have a feeling from reading the reports published today in Australia that the Australian Government knows much more than it is ready to reveal to the public.

TONY JONES: What makes you say that, because one thing these reports reveal is the Government wasn't briefed, or at least senior members of the Government say they were not briefed by their intelligence services and by their own senior public servants after those people outside of the actual government knew about this?

YOSSI MELMAN: Well, this is exactly my point. It is becoming an internal Australian affair. Who knew at what time, and there was some lack of communication probably between your security services and the other organs of the government - the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, your Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But I have a feeling that your security services - at least the security services - were in constant touch with the Israeli security services.

There is a good cooperation and liaison relations between our Mossad and your foreign spy agency that they have been briefed on this matter, and not maybe there is always an element of departmentalisation that you don't tell everything. But I think they... your security services know slightly more about the operational side, which can explain what he was doing, why he was arrested, was he accused of treachery or just espionage or a contact with a foreign agent - but they don't tell it.

TONY JONES: So...

YOSSI MELMAN: As our agencies don't tell it.

TONY JONES: To put it like this: are you saying effectively when Israel spies briefed Australia's spies - a spy to spy, as it were - they told them to truth, they told them what he was charged with, what the circumstances of this are, and yet our spies have not told our Government. Is that what you're saying?

YOSSI MELMAN: Probably, yes, probably that was the case. You see, sometimes for not endangering operations or future operations or for your wish to keep mode of operations, you don't share the full story with even friendly services - but you obviously tell them to a certain degree what happened in this case. Especially one has to realise... that this Ben Zygier affair came very shortly after the larger scandal of the assassination of Mabhouh.

And at that time, the Israeli government was under enormous pressure from the Australian Government, from the British government, from German government, French and the Irish government for using or misusing their passports. And because of that I believe that Mossad was ready at the time when Ben Zygier was arrested to share much more than usually he would have done in different circumstances. I think that your Government or your security services have a better knowledge of this affair - certainly better knowledge than the Israeli public has.

TONY JONES: One of the hypotheses in fact is that he was locked away to prevent him from ever being able to give details to the Australian Government about the use of Australian passports by Israeli intelligence services, and particularly obviously in the case of the assassins in Dubai? What do you think about that?

YOSSI MELMAN: Well, I don't buy it. From the Israeli perspective, from the Israeli intelligence perspective, we are talking about an Israeli citizen. He came to Israel, he emigrated to Israel, he is an Israeli citizen, he was recruited by the Israeli Mossad probably - although neither Israel nor Australia are saying it in so many words - and I am not sure that being an operative of the Israeli intelligence he used his Australian cover.

Maybe he used a different cover, but even if he used his Australian identity or one of the identities which he took from Australia, still from the Israeli point of view he was an Israeli operative working for the Israeli security services, and I think that your government - at least according to the report - has accepted it.

TONY JONES: Now, you've written about Israel's "X files" system when they uncover a rogue spy. Has Israel ever locked a man away and hid his identity simply out of embarrassment?

YOSSI MELMAN: Well, it's a mix of reasons. Not only out of embarrassment. Certainly, this reason is hidden also in their raison d're: why not to expose the identity of someone who is accused of or indicted of espionage or treason. There are other reasons also. They want to also... they believe that revealing his identity would lead the media... would lead the other side, the enemy, the rivals of Israel in a kind of a reverse engineering to expose this particular operation that he was involved in and other operations as well.

So it's a concern for operational... it's a concern for the operational information not being revealed to the other side. It's an effort to not to soil relations with foreign countries - in this case Australia. And also there's a certain element of embarrassment, and they don't like the media in general - security services don't like the media. They like only to use them to manipulate them, but they don't like to share information with them and sometimes they see them as almost their enemy.

In our case, in Israel, this is in many... many instances the case. And therefore they don't tell the public because they fear that while they tell the public via the media the media will continue to dig and dig and dig into this affair, and would reveal information that they don't like.

TONY JONES: Yossi Melman, we'll have to leave you there. Seems like a lot of digging still needs to be done by Israeli journalists like yourself - we thank you very much for joining us.